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“Okay, kind of missing the point here,” I said.
Sha
“I don’t know what to think,” I told her, pulling my knees up under my chin. I fiddled with the laces on one of my sneakers. “She told Jake that she never had sex with Will, and he believes her, but …”
“Ally. You have to do something,” Sha
“Shhhh!”
I looked up at the court, but no one was paying any attention to us. Most of our teammates were either gossiping or drilling layups. Coach walked in from the lobby and flipped through her clipboard, her silver whistle dangling low around her neck. Practice was about to start.
“It’s not up to me,” I whispered, my pulse racing. “Jake doesn’t want to hear it and I don’t know…. I have to believe that if Chloe thought Will might be the father, she would have said something. She couldn’t do this to Jake.”
“You think Chloe’s going to admit to her parents that their pristine little girl isn’t only a nonvirgin, but she’s also had sex with more than one guy?” Sha
“Well, I can’t do it,” I said. “Jake would freak.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Sha
I jumped from my seat. “No! You just promised me you wouldn’t say anything.”
Sha
There was another objection on the tip of my tongue, but I hesitated. “Like what?”
Slowly, wickedly, Sha
“Oh, you know me,” she said. “I always think of something.”
Coach blew the whistle to call us to attention, and Sha
I’d already awakened Sha
jake
Ally was amazing on the basketball court. She was so focused. And she was so … graceful. That’s the only word I can think of for it. Even when she was slamming into defenders, sweating everywhere, and shouting at her teammates, she was just graceful. It was like she was born to be out there.
I sat near the top of the bleachers with Co
I had texted her that I was coming tonight. She hadn’t replied. She hadn’t talked to me since the fight we’d had on Sunday. Sha
Over the past few days I’d realized what she’d meant that night at Chloe’s party. How she felt like she hadn’t really seen me in a while. Over the summer, when I was with her, some part of my body was always touching some part of hers. Either I was holding her hand on the street or had my leg hooked over hers on the couch or had her head resting on my shoulder. We were always talking about all kinds of stuff—our crazy families, how school could be totally lame and kind of fun at the same time, how weird it was that in a year we would be living somewhere else. Everything. And we laughed. A lot. We were always laughing about something.
I couldn’t remember what that felt like anymore. And I think I’d realized that too late.
As I watched her score a three, and the Idiot Twins went berserk, I suddenly felt heart-numbingly sad. Because she was going to break up with me. I could feel it. I knew that when I found her tonight, she was going to say something to end it. Unless I said something to stop her first.
As the final buzzer sounded, I stood up, determined. I’d already lost everything else. I couldn’t lose Ally, too.
Ally and the rest of the team slapped hands with the other players. Then everyone gathered around the coach. I made my way along the wall under the backboard and toward the exit that went right to the girls’ locker room. I was standing there when the team started to go through, my heart pounding a mile a minute. Sha
“Nice game,” I said.
She tucked a stray hair behind her ear and looked away. “Thanks.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Can this wait? Until I’ve, like, showered?” she asked quietly. My heart sunk. She was definitely, definitely going to break up with me.
“No. It can’t,” I said.
She crossed her arms over her chest. Behind her the gym was emptying out. Her coach gave me this scolding look as she went by, but at least she went by.
“Jake—”
“I have something I have to say,” I told her. I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans.
“Okay, fine,” she said, lifting her chin. “What?”
I licked my lips. My pulse pounded in my ears. My mind was a total blank. The guys were hovering by the door to the lobby, waiting for me. My collar itched. The lights in the gym had never been so bright.
“What is it, Jake?”
Then I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed her by the waistband of her maroon-and-gold shorts, pulled her to me, and kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone before. I held her sweaty ponytail against the back of her neck and just kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. When she finally pulled back, I didn’t let her pull too far. I held on to her as hard as I could.
“I know I suck,” I whispered, looking her in the eye, feeling desperate. “I know I don’t deserve you. Just don’t leave me. Please? I’ll be better, okay? Just don’t leave me.”
Part of me couldn’t believe I’d just said anything that pathetic. Now she knew how much she mattered. And I looked like some kind of whipped asshole with no life.
But honestly? I didn’t care. I was just kind of glad no one else had heard me.
There was a long, long, long pause. Then Ally buried her face in my sweater and put her arms around me.
“I won’t,” she said. The fist around my heart finally released. “I won’t.”
jake
“Dudes. This is not a good idea.”
I stood in the middle of Dr. Nathanson’s study, watching my friends be their usual jackass selves. It was the holiday Sunday night di
“Dude. Stop being such a buzz kill,” Todd said. He misplaced a glass and it tumbled sideways. I made a grab for it, but it fell right back into his hands.
“Oh. Oops,” he said. Then he and his brother doubled over laughing.
“If you guys break anything, you’re so dead,” I said through my teeth.
“What? Mini-Nate is right there. If she had a problem, she’d say something.”